Journalism Tech Review: Tweetbot

History

Tweetbot took advantage of Twitter’s relatively open API to develop an iPhone native app which easily outshone their basic mobile offering. Although Twitter significantly upped its game with a redesign last year (following the acquisition of Tweetie and its coder), Tweetbot broke free from some of Twitter’s more idealistic attributes – including the patronising and advertising heavy #discover option.

In practice

You can very easily flick between multiple accounts, lists and searches. Particularly useful is Tweetbot’s “gestures” – a simple swipe and you can view replies or conversations on any tweet. Tap once to view a link, hold down to use the link or save to any number of apps, or configure triple tap options for yourself.

How it helps you

For feeding back tweets and multimedia on the move it is very good, especially with the facility to upload in the background. Also, not only can you flick between multiple Twitter personalities (for example public and private you) but you can keep track of Twitter lists. You can even turn a Twitter list into your timeline of contacts’ tweets or monitor keep on top of a story by monitoring a hashtag.

Drawbacks

Although it can be always on you have to drag down to refresh your timeline. If you want to keep abreast of several areas you have to swipe around. Tweetbot only has column based filtering and searching in the iPad app. Both iOS apps come with a £1.99 price tag. And beware, if you like it and want to start using it on your Mac then it’ll cost you £13.99 – apparently raised by Tweetbot to discourage too many users after Twitter restricted its API. Perhaps because of this, we’re unlikely to see anything developed for Android or PC anytime soon.